Much as I would have loved to be the horny little fuck bunny the newspapers apparently thought I was too old to still be, I’d mostly meant in general. “The second one.”
“Then no, it wouldn’t be inappropriate.”
I wriggled, partly from discomfort but partly because wriggling in bed next to Oliver was just nice. “Doesn’t it feel icky, though?”
In the dark, I couldn’t see the expression on Oliver’s face, but I also totally could. “Lucien, how do you think straight couples with more than one child get that way?”
“I don’t know. Judicious use of holidays? Sleepovers? Artificial insemination?”
“Parenting involves sacrifices. It doesn’t involvethat manysacrifices or nobody would do it. We should restrict ourselves to our bedroom, but otherwise I can’t see there being any issues.”
That was a satisfying-ish answer for about three minutes. Then I found myself somewhat fatally asking, “But what if it’s, like,loud?”
“I have faith in your self-control.”
“I bloody well don’t.”
“Then”—Oliver bit me wickedly on the collarbone—“I shall buy you a ball gag.”
Okay, that had escalated quickly. “I wonder why they don’t put that in the parenting manuals.”
“Oh, they do. It’s usually in the chapter after clear boundaries and expectations.”
I pulled a face which I was quite glad Oliver couldn’t see. “You’re just exploiting the fact that you’ve read books and I haven’t.”
“Thereisa simple solution to that,” Oliver pointed out.
“But that would involve reading,” I said with what I hoped was a playful whine. “I hate reading.”
“You read that book about dogs.”
“Only to prove you wrong.”
I could feel Oliver’s smile next to me. “I think that tells us some very important things about your personality. Now, we should probably go to sleep. It’s a school night.”
I’d got so used toschool nightbeing used as a general term fornight where you have to get up at a sensible time in the morningthat it took me a second to realise he meant it literally. Jaz would be starting her new school tomorrow, and, as primary caregiver, I had some care to primarily give. In this case, dropping her off, attending a meeting with something called a virtual school, and picking her up again at the end of the day.
“Oliver,” I whispered again as I felt myself drifting off.
“Yes?”
“Do I need to know what Pupil Premium Plus is?”
He gave me the gentlest of squeezes and kissed me on the back of the head. “I’m afraid so.”
* * *
The following morning, I discovered to my cost that dressing like a grown-up and dressing like an adult were two different things, and I’d spent most of my life doing the second one. I was pretty sure my skintight fuck-me jeans and my skintight fuck-meT-shirts—crap, I had a lot of skintight fuck-me clothes—weren’t the kind of thing you wore to take your foster kid to school. At the other end of the scale, I had suits I wore to meet our richer, more arseholey donors, but, at a West London comprehensive, those were going to screamtryhard wanker. And people would probably screamtryhard wankerdirectly at me. Or, I don’t know, whatever the youngs were yelling at the olds these days.Rizzless skibidior something. In the end, I pulled out the most appropriate bits of the smart-casual-ish ensembles I used with mid-level donors. So, sensibly cut jeans, with no obvious rips, and a shirt that didn’t show my nipples.
Downstairs, Oliver was already mid-bircher. He hadn’t put a jar out for me, but that was less from a lack of thought than from having thought enough to know that even with an early start, I’d avoid the bircher out of the fear I’d die from a health overdose.
“You can probably give Jasmine a little longer if you think she needs it,” he said. “At her age, sleep cycles can be complicated.”
“She prefers Jaz,” I reminded him.
“I’m sure she does. But we’re not here to be her friends, we’re here to be her foster parents, and I think it’s useful to remind ourselves of that.”
This was another one of those situations where I saw his point, wasn’t sure I agreed, but hadn’t done enough research to disagree effectively. I was actually nervous enough that I didn’t feel like breakfast, but I knew if I didn’t have something, I’d wind up in a very important meeting with my stomach making weird noises and my brain constantly jabbing me with examples of things I could be eating.
